—Chapter 20: Regrouping—

Poe examined his own face, reflecting back at him from the dark gray conference room table, and hoped it looked less funereal to everyone else than it did to him. Besides Finn, the rest of the Resistance wasn't feeling quite as bleak as he was, but there was still a situation to deal with. Snap had just finished briefing Lieutenant Connix and Commander D'Acy on the events at Kamino, and they were now mulling over their options.

"Do we know what the First Order's next target is?" asked D'Acy.

"Ben probably does," Poe sighed. "But he was too busy having a little temper tantrum in Rey's room to tell me anything about it. I think it's fair to say we're on our own for a little while. He doesn't care enough about the Resistance to want to help us without Rey."

Fretfulness had carved deep lines in Finn's features. Wearily, he asked, "What are we going to do to get her back?"

"Are we even sure she's alive?" asked Snap.

Poe set his jaw thoughtfully. "She's alive. And it's safe to assume they'll keep her alive at least long enough to try to interrogate her. They'll want to know where our base is."

Connix's eyes opened wide in alarm. "Do we need to evacuate?" She had already been down that road too many times before.

Poe shook his head. "She's a fighter. She's strong with the Force, and she won't give us up easily. Kylo Ren couldn't break her, and I doubt they've got anyone around now who's as capable as he was," added Poe with a shrug.

"We know she was on the Finalizer, but it's doubtful they're still hanging around Kamino," said Finn, tapping a panel to pull up a holographic map of the galaxy. "Her transponder died shortly after we jumped into hyperspace. Without knowing where they are, or where they plan to go next for more kids…" he added, trailing off.

"Do we know that they won't just continue harvesting from Lothal?" asked Poe.

"No." Finn shook his head, "Now that they've already established a presence there, it will be a slow trickle out of Lothal. Instead, they'll want to spread their major efforts around, remind everyone to keep in line. We've got no way of knowing where they'll hit next."

"Then there really isn't a lot we can do," Connix said, looking hopelessly at the enormous holographic display.

They glanced around the table at each other, looking forlorn. With an abrupt thud and a swish, the heavy conference room door opened, followed by loud footsteps. The team of Resistance fighters turned to find the source of the intrusion, and Poe couldn't help but notice the uncertain body language of his superiors as they spied Ben Solo striding up to them.

Ben stopped, staring at Poe as the two men traded evaluations of one another.

"Well?" urged Poe impatiently, "We're busy trying to strategize our next move. Either say something useful or get out, we don't have time to mess around."

Without so much as acknowledging anyone else in the room, Ben began to address Poe. "I can find Rey, and we can go to where she is before she's interrogated or killed. A small team can execute a rescue, while your main forces go to where the First Order have plans for another recruitment effort."

"Which is where?" asked Snap.

"Arkanis. That operation should have been underway by the time we arrived at Kamino, but it may have been stalled, given that Hux chose to engage with us instead. It's likely they'll be resuming that operation shortly given that they'll know we interrogated their officers." Ben looked away, muttering, "It would have made more sense to kill them."

Poe ignored the muttered comment. He wanted to scowl, but the mere fact that the man before him was equivocating at all over having left survivors behind struck him as progress. Change, at least. He chose instead to focus on the facts. "So if we get to Arkanis now, we can stop them. Maybe steal or destroy their ships so they can't do this again."

"You're sure they won't just abandon those plans if they know we know about them?" asked Snap.

"Doubtful," replied Ben. "The Hux I know is more likely to double down than he is to give up. His ego is too fragile, and Faris Ren isn't strategist enough to know better…"

"We're spread a little thinly to try and intercept them while caring for all those kids we just collected," considered Connix. "We may not have enough bodies."

Losing patience, Ben cut in. "Whatever, you guys can work all that out. Who's going to help me get Rey?"

The Resistance fighters exchanged glances again. Finn answered, "I'm sure Chewie would be willing to take the Falcon on a recovery mission. He's probably in the hangar."

"Perfect," replied Ben. "We need to do that. Now. Let's go."

D'acy shook her head, "Rey is just one person. We're talking about thousands of kids. We need every able-bodied fighter working to protect them. We can try to get her after we've dealt with Arkanis."

Poe looked at Ben with resignation, "The commander is right. It pains me to say it, but Rey can hold on a little longer. The kids need us more."

Poe could tell Ben was about to protest, so he continued hastily, standing up to emphasize his authority. "Look, we all want her back. Nobody wants Rey back more than I do. But Commander D'acy is right, we need to prioritize." Frowning, he added, "We'll get her back, but in the meantime, we know that she can withstand interrogation—at least for as long as it will take us to put together a real plan to save her."

Ben was completely unsympathetic to Poe's misgivings. He smacked the table, upset. "You don't understand. It's not just that idiot Hux, or some mid-level sadists who'll be doing the interrogation. If we don't hurry, Faris Ren will get to her. He will pry everything from her. And he will not be as gentle as I was." Ben leveled a complicated look at Poe.

"No…" Connix stuttered. "If they get our location from her then we're in serious trouble. We can't possibly evacuate the whole base, including all those children, before they get here."

Ben nodded sternly. "That's why we need to get to her. Now."

There was a moment of quiet as D'Acy considered all she'd heard. "Alright. Finn, you talk to Chewbacca and get the Falcon ready to depart. Once you've located Rey you have my permission to leave as soon as possible."

Finn nodded excitedly, rising from his seat.

"Good," said Ben. "Now, in order to get to Rey, we'll need a cloaked binary beacon."

"I've got a set in my quarters," offered Finn. "I'll get Chewie started prepping the ship, and then head to my chamber to get it." Finn left, and they could hear him running down the hall, as he called Chewbacca on his comlink.

"Now, about their plans at Arkanis…" interjected Snap.

Ben shook his head. "I don't have time. Are you going to be in charge of that? Because I could just pass the information directly to you, then I could get out of here."

Snap looked away briefly, instantly uncomfortable. The others looked at him expectantly. He couldn't help it that his reservations showed plainly on his face, but Snap stood up from the table and took a reluctant step toward Ben.

"Good." Ben put his hand on Snap's forehead and closed his eyes, quickly summoning forth the information he had gleaned from Kamino. It was over in a flash, as Snap sat back down in his chair, exhaling slowly.

"There you go." With that, Ben abruptly started to walk out of StratComm, before pausing at the door, his back to the assembled officers. "Good luck," he mumbled, without looking back. He then rushed off, not even checking to see if anyone was following him.

Poe sighed, then turned to the others. "I'm going to be with the team that collects Rey. Let me know if you need me for anything." Then Poe pivoted on his heel and followed after Ben.

Commander D'Acy, Lieutenant Connix, and Snap looked at each other in shock, each of them surprised by the sudden change in events. "Well," said D'Acy, after a moment, "Snap, what do you have for us?"

Ben pushed open the door to Finn's room without so much as a glancing look back at Poe, who had been wordlessly following behind him. Once Ben was inside, he studied the few pieces of storage furniture in Finn's quarters.

"How did you even know this was Finn's room?" asked Poe from the doorway.

"I studied the base's layout during my recovery."

"The 'spying thing' you taught Rey?"

"Yeah, that," Ben answered without contention.

Finn rejoined them only seconds later, having raced to the hangar and then to his quarters as quickly as he could manage. He stood sweating and huffing in the doorway, surprised to find them already there—he was expecting them to have taken longer to wrap up their discussion back at StratComm. Poe greeted his arrival with a nod.

Ben turned to the bedside table. "Is it in here?" he asked no one in particular, helping himself into the drawer.

Finn attempted, unsuccessfully, to get in front of Ben and take over the searching of his things, but Ben would not be shoved aside. All Finn could do was point. "Uh, yeah, it's there on the left."

Ben plucked the pieces out of the drawer and turned to face the two other men in the room. "Okay, now get out. I have to talk to Rey."

Finn and Poe exchanged confused glances. They weren't about to be left out of whatever Ben was planning. "Look, whatever weird Force thing you're going to do that will let you talk to Rey, I want to be there," asserted Poe. "If we're going to help, we need to know what's going on, and it's just more efficient if we can hear things firsthand rather than have you relay private conversations. Just be transparent, for once."

"Yeah," said Finn, nodding his agreement.

Ben sighed in irritation, but was prepared to do anything to avoid further arguing with Rey's friends. "Alright, but don't say anything. Just be quiet, she won't be able to hear you anyway."

They shrugged. "Okay," Finn said.

"Do your thing," added Poe.

Feeling their eyes on him hindered his ability to center himself well enough to connect to Rey. He turned his back on them, trying to shut them out, but imagining them exchanging confused, impatient glances behind him just made the whole thing take even longer than normal. Eventually, though, he managed—Rey was here. However, "here" was somewhere outside the confines of Finn's tiny bachelor's quarters.

"Dammit," muttered Ben as he pushed past the two other men into the hallway of the residence area. Finn and Poe kept close behind.

"Ben?"

Hearing his name, Ben turned to his right toward the corridor where the common area in Finn's wing of the residence hall was located. Once he reached it, he could see Rey suspended a foot or so from the ground, her outspread arms apparently bound to some invisible anchor. She was looking right at him.

He locked his gaze with hers, momentarily silent as he took her in. "You're alone?" he finally asked.

"Yes. Ben, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I let this happen. There are so many things I need to atone for, I don't even know where to begin," said Rey, shame and sadness creasing the smooth lines of her face, and tears pricked her eyes.

"Don't worry about that, just tell me where you are."

Finn and Poe could only hear Ben's half of the conversation, and both men were itching to interrupt to ask Ben to narrate her answers. Summoning their last reserves of restraint, they kept control of themselves.

"I'm in Hux's personal chambers," she answered. "He had this contraption installed so he could keep me in here. There are guards at the door."

"His chambers… That's disgusting. Have they tried to interrogate you?"

"Only barely. This tall creepy guy attempted to read my mind, but I was able to block him out easily enough."

"That's Lorim Ren," Ben observed. "He's a novice at mind reading. With your power he should be no problem for you. Faris, however, is another story. Is he there?"

"No, he's on the Supremacy. I think we're headed there now though."

"Most likely. I can show you how to close your mind off more securely, and that might keep him out of your head. Also, I need to plant this on you." He held up the binary beacon he had taken from Finn's drawer. "Where can I stick this where they won't find it?"

"There's a hidden pocket on the inside of my tunic," said Rey, looking down to her right.

Ben approached her suspended form and carefully lifted the fabric of her tunic away from her skin. He needed to unfasten some buttons before he could reveal the hidden pocket, but his gloves made it hard to get them undone. Frustrated, he ripped the glove off his right hand with his teeth, let it fall to the floor, and resumed prying at the buttons. After a couple had been successfully loosened, he spotted a flap in the interior lining of the tunic. He lifted the flap and inserted the beacon.

Ben lingered in Rey's shadow for a few seconds before taking a step back. Looking up at her, he said, "With that, we should be able to find you soon enough." Delicately, he refastened the buttons on her tunic.

The two stared at each other anxiously, realizing they would need to close their connection soon. There was so much they wanted to say to each other, but extremely limited time. Rey knew they had business to take care of—anything more would have to wait. "Don't you need to help me prepare for Faris Ren?" she asked tentatively.

"Oh right," replied Ben awkwardly. "He's a moron, but he's powerful." He stepped closer to her again and lifted his ungloved hand to her forehead. When he touched her skin to skin, Poe and Finn were able to see her, and both men gasped audibly, drawing Rey's attention. Her cheeks reddened as she realized this wasn't the private moment she thought she was having. She smiled sweetly at the two men and tried to relax her mind enough to take in Ben's teachings.

When Ben was finished, his hand lingered on Rey's forehead, reluctant to part from her. Instead of backing away, he let his hand slide down and around to her lower back, causing her friends' image of her to flicker and wane as fabric interrupted the direct contact. As his hand came to rest at the small of her back, her image became clear again thanks to a bit of exposed flesh between her pants and her tunic. Ben leaned in to rest his temple against her collarbone—that being the highest he could reach, suspended as she was. He seemed not to notice or care that there were two onlookers behind him.

Rey nuzzled into the top of Ben's head, pleasantly surprised by his affections in the presence of her two friends. She kissed his head through his hair and smiled.

Breathing in her scent one last time, Ben whispered into her shoulder, too quietly for the others to hear, "I'll come back for you, sweetheart." At that, he gave her waist a reassuring squeeze and gently pulled away from her. As his physical connection was severed, she could no longer see her friends standing by watching them.

"I love you," she said.

Ben's face reddened, and he averted his eyes from hers.

Rey laughed sweetly. She had yet to hear him utter the words that she had now spoken twice, but she was nothing if not eternally patient, and she was confident of what was in his heart. "It's okay, I know you love me too. I won't make you say it in front of them. I'll see you again soon."

Ben nodded, and Rey was alone once more.

"You mean to tell me that they stole back all of the children we took?" Faris Ren gritted out through clenched teeth, from the dais of his throne.

Hux was down on his knees in front of Faris, eyes glued to the floor in front of him. "Yes, Supreme Leader."

The Knights of Ren stood obediently at the back of the chamber, observing quietly. Sharna Ren stared derisively at Hux. She had never liked the man, finding him ever obsequious and weaselly. He was smart, however, to have chosen to go to Faris for help overcoming Kylo—although he was powerful, Faris was the most easily manipulated of the four of them; a very suggestible Supreme Leader. A puppet ruler and figurehead is not what Hux would've gotten had he gone to her for help instead. Anyone with a willingness to pay Faris a second glance could see that Faris's ambitions were petty and that he was susceptible to the temptation of easy power—he wouldn't second-guess the motivations behind why the power was so willingly granted.

"This is what your failure with Kylo Ren has wrought. I should kill you for this," bellowed Faris.

"Please, Supreme Leader, we may yet have what we need to bring him to heel. The Jedi we captured is his intimate—we can use her against him. If we were to torture her, would he not feel it? We could use her to weaken him while we invade Arkanis and Corellia. We may even be able to get her to reveal the location of the Resistance base, allowing us to recover our losses."

"Have you not already interrogated her?" Faris asked, plainly irritated.

"Lorim Ren attempted to do so, but her mind proved too difficult to read," replied Hux. Lorim took a step forward at the mention of his name. "Even Kylo Ren had difficulty reading her when he first encountered her," continued Hux.

"Lorim couldn't read the mind of a stormtrooper," grunted Faris. Lorim looked down and took a step back. "It is I who has the most talent in this area. Bring her to me, and I will extract what we need."

Sharna couldn't deny that Faris had a gift for mental manipulation. It was for this reason that she had always guarded her thoughts from him and the others. She made sure that her outward attitudes gave as little away as possible, to limit the amount of scrutiny any of her comrades may subject her to. Up to this point, she was reasonably sure their suspicions of her remained typical of what you'd expect from a group as generally paranoid as they were. The Knights of Ren were mistrusting by nature. As long as their examinations of her didn't trigger negative attitudes beyond background levels, she was safe.

"She is back on the Finalizer, secured in my private chambers," supplied Hux.

Faris raised an eyebrow. "Your chambers? Seems an odd place to keep a prisoner…"

With an air of implacable judiciousness, Hux explained, "We need to ensure no unauthorized visitors. We've had problems with her before."

Sharna rolled her eyes. Even without peering into his mind, she could tell he had personal reasons for wanting her kept in his chambers.

"No more of that. Bring her here." Faris Ren looked past the kneeling Hux to his fellow Knights of Ren, addressing them directly. "Sharna, Simeon, see to her transfer."

Sharna Ren stepped forward, bowing reverently for her leader. "At once, my lord." Turning on her heel, she left the throne room, followed by a silent and ever amenable Simeon Ren.

"The Liska and Taiga are already in position at Arkanis. That operation should never have been put on hold in the first place. Lorim and Prarathi, since you're back here now anyway, you two will oversee the operation at Corellia, which will proceed immediately—it no longer makes sense to stagger these operations if the Resistance is already aware of our plans at Arkanis, as is most likely. Organize the vessels Gashel and Bevel and see if you can't collect and actually keep a reasonable number of recruits this time," ordered Faris acerbically.

Lorim Ren nodded graciously to his ruler. "Yes, Supreme Leader. I promise you the results you deserve."

"The next time you see us our army will be thousands of recruits greater," effused Prarathi, bowing deeply. Prarathi and Lorim Ren swiveled and marched out of the chamber.

Faris turned his attention back to his beleaguered general. "I will see to this girl's interrogation. After that, I expect you to ensure her security. By any means necessary."

"Absolutely, Supreme Leader. I know just what to do."

Hux was summarily dismissed.